The media’s disdain for groups that challenge apocalyptic views on climate change is often evident, but on Nov. 17, even The Washington Post realized it went too far.
The Post published an article on its website about Rep. Lamar Smith’s, R-Texas, subpoena demanding access to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists’ internal communications.
But in the process of covering that story the Post’s Lisa Rein, a reporter who covers the federal workforce, maligned the Competitive Enterprise Institute by inaccurately labeling it “anarchist.” Rein turned to well-known climate alarmist Gavin Schmidt of NASA for his opinion on the subpoena.
Before it was scrubbed by someone at the Post and replaced with “libertarian,” the offending paragraph read:
“Science works through a huge degree of transparency with double, triple, and quadruple checking of results," said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climatologist who spent five years fighting a lawsuit from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anarchist think-tank that sought access to his personal e-mails under the Freedom of Information Act. (A judge eventually dismissed the suit).”
Of course, no one at CEI was even quoted for the story about their lawsuit against Schmidt, or commenting on the current congressional subpoena.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s website states that it is a “public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.” None of that sounds remotely like anarchism.
The Post predictably turned to Schmidt in order to make FOIA attempts of government officials and agencies sound useless, or worse. The paper also quoted alarmist scientist James Hansen.
However, Rein’s article didn’t provide any balance by including CEI’s perspective on that legal battle with Schmidt.
“CEI sought documents concerning Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a taxpayer-funded NASA researcher who, chief among other NASA scientists, spends working hours running and writing for a third-party website (RealClimate.org) that was created to defend the now-debunked "Hockey Stick" temperature graph,” CEI said in a 2010 press release.
The revision to the Post article without a correction notice or notification to the reader disguised its contempt for CEI, but only for those who hadn’t seen the story before the alteration.
